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>I'd argue that there are legitimate safety concerns that trump speech in this particular case. What makes HE well-positioned to be able to determine what cons

>I'd argue that there are legitimate safety concerns that trump speech in this particular case. What makes HE well-positioned to be able to determine what constitutes a "legitimate safety concern"? What happens when a pro-life organization or a corrupt politician starts leaning on ISPs to enforce their own views of what constitutes a "legitimate safety concern"? Cloudflare denied service to KF on an imminent threat to people's lives, which could have been justified on a short term basis. Their refusal to reinstate service months later strains the credulity of this rationale, and shows that it was never really the goal. I'm going to guess that if we ever get a post-mortem on what really is happening inside HE, what we'll find is not "a well-reasoned, dispassionate debate occurred and a consensus was reached in favor of censorship". Instead it will be like "someone powerful in the company made a unilateral decision and dissent was absent because everyone understood that it would have negative career consequences."

shortformblog 3y ago
I don’t think HE should be making that decision, especially in an upstream role—and the fact that they’re in that position points at a need for regulation. However, I would argue that KF is a long-term threat whose imminent dangers were honestly a very narrow lens that barely appeased a company that shouldn’t have been making the call in the first place. Their position in last year’s debate created a very volatile atmosphere for a solid month—a situation which would be volatile once again if brought back.
- yanderekko 3y ago
  The Constitution would not provide a carveout for the long-term censorship of a forum like KF based on some rationale like "creating a volatile atmosphere", so I don't know what you expect regulation to accomplish here. And of course activists would scream if such regulation were applied in a viewpoint-neutral fashion (eg. platforms being mandated to delete content that advocates for crime / violence - imagine how Trump would've used this power during the BLM riots!) - the non-neutrality is considered a feature of private censorship, not a bug.
  - chonkerz 3y ago
    I can't find anything in the Constitution about the Internet.
    - yanderekko 3y ago
      Yes, well, that's the beautiful thing about common law - we still have a pretty clear understanding of what constitutes free speech, and it's largely invariant to whether the means of communication is through the internet or a medium that was more-familiar to the founders.
- chonkerz 3y ago
  [flagged]

shortformblog 3y ago

I don’t think HE should be making that decision, especially in an upstream role—and the fact that they’re in that position points at a need for regulation. However, I would argue that KF is a long-term threat whose imminent dangers were honestly a very narrow lens that barely appeased a company that shouldn’t have been making the call in the first place. Their position in last year’s debate created a very volatile atmosphere for a solid month—a situation which would be volatile once again if brought back.

yanderekko 3y ago
The Constitution would not provide a carveout for the long-term censorship of a forum like KF based on some rationale like "creating a volatile atmosphere", so I don't know what you expect regulation to accomplish here. And of course activists would scream if such regulation were applied in a viewpoint-neutral fashion (eg. platforms being mandated to delete content that advocates for crime / violence - imagine how Trump would've used this power during the BLM riots!) - the non-neutrality is considered a feature of private censorship, not a bug.
- chonkerz 3y ago
  I can't find anything in the Constitution about the Internet.
  - yanderekko 3y ago
    Yes, well, that's the beautiful thing about common law - we still have a pretty clear understanding of what constitutes free speech, and it's largely invariant to whether the means of communication is through the internet or a medium that was more-familiar to the founders.
chonkerz 3y ago
[flagged]